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Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who Now "More Like Itself"

Neil Gaiman has been talking, somewhat obliquely, about the episode of BBC's Doctor Who that he's written, and shared a scene from the ten pages that have already been cut for time before production even began.

In his blog, Gaiman updates fans and the curious about the script's progress:

We're about ten days away from the Doctor Who table reading. I spoke to the Director for the first time yesterday. And the script is pretty much the script. (ie, I'm about to send off a script to the Script Editor that I hope will be, if not the last draft, then the one that we go into the table read with). Technically it's probably the tenth draft, but I'm not really counting any more. (The "Cut ten pages" draft of the trip to Australia was the last one that felt like major surgery.) [Who executive producer and head writer] Steven Moffat came to my rescue when I felt like I couldn't even pick it up again, and for that, he is a hero.

It hasn't really changed that much. It just gets tighter and, I hope, more like itself. Slowly, draft by draft, it's being turned up to eleven.

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He also described what's missing from the new drafts, compared with the original:

Anything that wasn't moving the plot forward has gone. Lots of interesting chatty background conversations in the TARDIS, gone. Lines of dialogue that were fun in themselves but weren't really needed? Gone. And the food scene? Very gone indeed. It's been gone since draft six.

The food scene is the one he shares with his readers; I'll send you to his blog entry to read the whole thing, but I'll just say this: Given what else Matt Smith's Doctor has eaten, can Amy really be surprised he's a taste-first-wonder-about-risk-later kind of a guy?